Boston bombing case reveals dangerous ignorance of conflict in Chechnya: As I See It

Every day there are multiple incidents of terrorism and counter-terrorism with high casualties in the North Caucasus.

By Stephen Blank

On April 15 terrorism came to Boston, the cradle of American liberty. While the terrrorists’ motives are still unknown, lessons we need to learn already are emerging.

The revelation that the two terrorists were of Chechen origin cannot, by itself, establish a motive for their actions. Nonetheless, the virtual absence of knowledge among the media about the nature of the continuing insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasian republics should cause us concern.

While we cannot expect our elites to be experts who are up to date on every single global threat to security, we do need them to have some sense of what is going on in key countries like Russia and what those wars might mean to international security. Moreover they need to be able to explain the importance of these events to other elites and to the general public.

Reporters were able to disseminate background data about the two suspected terorrists’ lives. Undoubtedly the suspects' motivations will be revealed through the course of the current investigation. But whatever the motivations may be, it is clear we have failed to grasp the importance and potential consequences of events in Chechnya.

In the North Caucasus, Russia has succesfully imposed a virtual information blockade of the local insurgency. It has been aided by the disinterest and passivity of our media and government.

Every day there are multiple incidents of terrorism and counter-terrorism with high casualties in the North Caucasus. Moreover, this insurgency has invaded Russia’s heartland. In 2012 terrorists assassinated the Grand Mufti of Russian Islam and gravely wounded his deputy in the large city of Kazan on the Volga. Since then it is clear that insurgents are organizing along the Volga and adjoining communites around the Ural Mountains. In the past they have attacked airplanes and theaters in Moscow. Yet little or nothing of this has been reported here, with the ensuing result that we know little or nothing about this critical and brutal conflict.

Moscow has no effective answer except ever greater brutality, as the North Caucasus is the most poorly governed, and among the most corrupt provinces of the Russian state. Undoubtedly the bombings in Boston will galvanize Russian authorites to tighten security for the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi. But that is a bandaid upon an open wound.

Indeed, the insurgents and terrorists of the North Caucasus, led by the Caucasus Emirate under Doku Umarov, a radicalized former Chechen insurgent who, like this insurgency, morphed from nationalism to Salafist Islam’s advocacy of terrorism, are self-proclaimed Jihadists. They proudly and openly advertise their affiliation with and connection to Al-Qaida.

Last year the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute published a study on this insurgency but clearly it did not have much resonance, not only among our media, but also one suspects among congressional committees and staffs, as well as other policy makers. The Caucasus Emirate’s open threat to dismember Russia and our friend Azerbaijan and establish a Jihadi state in the region highlights our continuing vulnerability. This ignorance represents a serious strategic weakness that must be overcome, if our security and that of our partners is to be assured.

At a time of austerity, budget cutters may find it tempting to assume that we need weapons systems more than knowledgeable experts who provide the capacity for sustained reflection as to what these threats mean. Terrorist acts always surprise, but they need not remain lasting enigmas, if we can draw the connections, if any, between events abroad in countries that are no longer so distantly removed from our own security.

Just as the leaders of the American Revolution in Boston understood their role in the world and the global significance of their actions, as well as the importance of an informed citizenry, we must increase our knowledge and understanding of the world and of global trends. It no longer is true that events in the North Caucasus or similarly “ungoverned spaces” are irrelevant to our concerns.

None of this is to argue that the suspected Boston marathon bombers were inspired or even encouraged by events in the North Caucasus. But, this tragic event drives home the point that we should be equipped with the knowledge necessary to make such a determination. Indeed, in regard to terrorism, as in other aspects of life, forewarned is forearmed.

Dr. Stephen Blank is a professor of national security studies at the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, in Carlisle.